30 July 2010

Several of my 1950s and 60s vinyl LPs, some of which are in frames on my walls. The early 1960s "Music From Out Of Space" sleeve was probably the first vintage album cover I ever fell in love with. It was, perhaps 20 years old at the time, but it felt like an artifact from a not-so-distant era... One in which everything looked MUCH better than it did in the early 1980s.

27 July 2010

Several stills from another NYC film great: Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis' dual-star vehicle called "The Sweet Smell Of Success". The Times Square we see here (1956 - 1957) is decidedly less grimy than the one depicted in later film fare, but the latter-day film noir touches used here create a moody foreshadowing of the dark times this district would see a decade later.

Stills from ANOTHER one of my favorite films, which also happens to feature Times Square. In this particular film, director John Schlessinger has not only used this area as a backdrop for Joe (Jon Voight) Buck's meanderings, but also cast the square as a character: a seething witness to all things.

26 July 2010

A collection of screen shots from several amateur 8mm films found on YouTube. Pretty colorful stuff that serves to animate many of the photos of the square I've been collecting since I was about 8 or 9 years old.

25 July 2010

Stills from Martin Scorsese's magnum opus on crime, isolation and despair. While Robert De Niro is the lead actor, the REAL star of this film is the steaming, lurid, neon-dappled grit of New York City in 1975. When asked the name of my favorite movie of all time, I always give this title. As many times as I come back to it, I always find it completely satisfying for the vivid illustration of its themes: both conceptual and visual.